Rating: 
Summary: Recommend
Review: At first glance, this dual format DVD drive will give you the biggest bang for the buck. Install is easy and bundled software plentiful. However, this drive isn't perfect compared to the CD-RW drive that I replaced. My only complaint is speed.When you drop a CD or DVD disk into the drive, it takes a long time to identify what kind of CD or DVD media is in the drive. More importantly. the DVD and CD write speeds are pokey at best (fastest write speed for CD is only 24x). When I install software from CDs, it seems to crawl. While this may not be an issue for most casual users, my rationalization for purchasing a DVD writable drive was to whittle away the huge pile of CD-Rs I have sitting around. I simply wanted to load the CD-Rs and copy them onto DVD, allowing me to throw away 4 or 5 CDs for every on DVD-R I made. No problem, until you take into consideration about the time involved in identifying, reading, and copying files to and from the drive. Still, the drive works as advertised, and I haven't yet experienced a buffer overrun or underrun (no more coasters). Recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Recommend
Review: At first glance, this dual format DVD drive will give you the biggest bang for the buck. Install is easy and bundled software plentiful. However, this drive isn't perfect compared to the CD-RW drive that I replaced. My only complaint is speed. When you drop a CD or DVD disk into the drive, it takes a long time to identify what kind of CD or DVD media is in the drive. More importantly. the DVD and CD write speeds are pokey at best (fastest write speed for CD is only 24x). When I install software from CDs, it seems to crawl. While this may not be an issue for most casual users, my rationalization for purchasing a DVD writable drive was to whittle away the huge pile of CD-Rs I have sitting around. I simply wanted to load the CD-Rs and copy them onto DVD, allowing me to throw away 4 or 5 CDs for every on DVD-R I made. No problem, until you take into consideration about the time involved in identifying, reading, and copying files to and from the drive. Still, the drive works as advertised, and I haven't yet experienced a buffer overrun or underrun (no more coasters). Recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Value
Review: For the price, you can't beat it. I really could care less about the speed. I just want dependability, and this inboard unit delivers. Easy to install, just take the face off your pc, slide it in, plug in the IDE and power, two screws, and that's it. (...)
Rating:
Summary: Good deal, good burner
Review: Got this burner on Friday and I have to say I am quite pleased. I already had Nero Ultra, so there was need for the OEM version (they finally put almost all the former "extras"--excepting unlimited MP3 creation--like Dolby encoding (little things like that) that used to double the price. So I can't give any comment on the Nero version so included. but the burner is solid. No coasters (knock on wood) of either kind. It installed easily. XP recognized it instantly without any "reactivation" required. (I've heard people complain about this but it's never happened to me and this VAIO is six months old.) True Plug n' Play. Something Apple still has trouble with. My VAIO has grey covers which fit over both 5 3/4" slots so the bezel color is irrelevant to me (but I can see if you've got a beige box how it would clash). As for some of the complaints mentioned, including Joe Turner, I haven't noticed any problems as he has. The burner readily ids any disc (CD or Dvd-x) and displays its name in My Computer. I am running a P4 2.8 dual proc so that might have something do with it. If you're system is older or perhaps you don't have DMA activated, it might take longer for the disk info to hit the processor. In other words, if you're machine is PII 450 with 256MB of 133 SDRAM, yeah, NERO is gonna run slow and the buffering is going to slow everything else down. With dual 2.8 GHz processor cores (the P4 HT), it ain't a problem. As for the "pokey" speeds for CD writing, I coped, using CDClone, an entire CD (Rush's "Power Windows" which I bought, egads, almost twenty years ago, but it was starting to show "eaten" away spots...so much for CDs lasting a century!), drive to drive (the Vaio came with a Pioneer 106D, which while on the slow side itself, I moved down to slot 2, replacing the ASUS CD-ROM drive the 'puter came with) is less than 4 minutes. I don't know why anyone would need to burn an entire CD in less than for minutes. Maybe there's somebody, but I can't see any real difference. Other than, the drive works great and I would reccommend it to anyone. I haven't had the chance to get any 8x DVD media. I'd already bought a large quantity of DVD+Rs 4X's and those have to be used before I buy the 8x discs. Besides, they are little pricey right now; too pricey just to be able to say, "Hey I backed up a whole movie in 7 minutes, cool, hunh?" Sure the new Sony I saw the shelves at Fry's will burn CDs at 40x speed. But in my book that ain't worth the extra hundred the Sony will cost you. Plus word of mouth on Sony optical drives--in my years in the industry--not very good and the reviews here on Amazon seem to indicate it hasn't got much better. But if you're looking for a solid drive, good burning software (that having been said, if you've already got a good burning package that you're comfortable with, I'd leave it alone; Nero includes a lot of stuff that, while not exactly 'bloatware' in the classic Micro$oftian sense, isn't really useful to the average consumer who wants to burn movies of the grandkids, make perfectly legal--see 321 decision by Judge Susan Illston--backup copies of DVDs you own; but if you are into authoring your own DVDs or Divx (Can TVs display MPEG-4 video straight from the video card?), then it's got everything you need; also, it's burning engine is excellent and is required if you want DVDShrink to burn the discs it transcodes for you) and don't need the fatest car on the block--so to speak--then this solid optical drive's features and price point make it a good choice. I deduct only one star for the inclusion of a stripped down version of Nero instead of the Ultra Package; or, failing that, an upgrade coupon for the "maxi-big" version, to quote Jar-Jar Binks. Odd that Ahead or Memorex would miss the "upsale" opportunity. In any event, A-.
Rating:
Summary: Good deal, good burner
Review: Got this burner on Friday and I have to say I am quite pleased. I already had Nero Ultra, so there was need for the OEM version (they finally put almost all the former "extras"--excepting unlimited MP3 creation--like Dolby encoding (little things like that) that used to double the price. So I can't give any comment on the Nero version so included. but the burner is solid. No coasters (knock on wood) of either kind. It installed easily. XP recognized it instantly without any "reactivation" required. (I've heard people complain about this but it's never happened to me and this VAIO is six months old.) True Plug n' Play. Something Apple still has trouble with. My VAIO has grey covers which fit over both 5 3/4" slots so the bezel color is irrelevant to me (but I can see if you've got a beige box how it would clash). As for some of the complaints mentioned, including Joe Turner, I haven't noticed any problems as he has. The burner readily ids any disc (CD or Dvd-x) and displays its name in My Computer. I am running a P4 2.8 dual proc so that might have something do with it. If you're system is older or perhaps you don't have DMA activated, it might take longer for the disk info to hit the processor. In other words, if you're machine is PII 450 with 256MB of 133 SDRAM, yeah, NERO is gonna run slow and the buffering is going to slow everything else down. With dual 2.8 GHz processor cores (the P4 HT), it ain't a problem. As for the "pokey" speeds for CD writing, I coped, using CDClone, an entire CD (Rush's "Power Windows" which I bought, egads, almost twenty years ago, but it was starting to show "eaten" away spots...so much for CDs lasting a century!), drive to drive (the Vaio came with a Pioneer 106D, which while on the slow side itself, I moved down to slot 2, replacing the ASUS CD-ROM drive the 'puter came with) is less than 4 minutes. I don't know why anyone would need to burn an entire CD in less than for minutes. Maybe there's somebody, but I can't see any real difference. Other than, the drive works great and I would reccommend it to anyone. I haven't had the chance to get any 8x DVD media. I'd already bought a large quantity of DVD+Rs 4X's and those have to be used before I buy the 8x discs. Besides, they are little pricey right now; too pricey just to be able to say, "Hey I backed up a whole movie in 7 minutes, cool, hunh?" Sure the new Sony I saw the shelves at Fry's will burn CDs at 40x speed. But in my book that ain't worth the extra hundred the Sony will cost you. Plus word of mouth on Sony optical drives--in my years in the industry--not very good and the reviews here on Amazon seem to indicate it hasn't got much better. But if you're looking for a solid drive, good burning software (that having been said, if you've already got a good burning package that you're comfortable with, I'd leave it alone; Nero includes a lot of stuff that, while not exactly 'bloatware' in the classic Micro$oftian sense, isn't really useful to the average consumer who wants to burn movies of the grandkids, make perfectly legal--see 321 decision by Judge Susan Illston--backup copies of DVDs you own; but if you are into authoring your own DVDs or Divx (Can TVs display MPEG-4 video straight from the video card?), then it's got everything you need; also, it's burning engine is excellent and is required if you want DVDShrink to burn the discs it transcodes for you) and don't need the fatest car on the block--so to speak--then this solid optical drive's features and price point make it a good choice. I deduct only one star for the inclusion of a stripped down version of Nero instead of the Ultra Package; or, failing that, an upgrade coupon for the "maxi-big" version, to quote Jar-Jar Binks. Odd that Ahead or Memorex would miss the "upsale" opportunity. In any event, A-.
Rating:
Summary: Good deal, good burner
Review: Got this burner on Friday and I have to say I am quite pleased. I already had Nero Ultra, so there was need for the OEM version (they finally put almost all the former "extras"--excepting unlimited MP3 creation--like Dolby encoding (little things like that) that used to double the price. So I can't give any comment on the Nero version so included. but the burner is solid. No coasters (knock on wood) of either kind. It installed easily. XP recognized it instantly without any "reactivation" required. (I've heard people complain about this but it's never happened to me and this VAIO is six months old.) True Plug n' Play. Something Apple still has trouble with. My VAIO has grey covers which fit over both 5 3/4" slots so the bezel color is irrelevant to me (but I can see if you've got a beige box how it would clash). As for some of the complaints mentioned, including Joe Turner, I haven't noticed any problems as he has. The burner readily ids any disc (CD or Dvd-x) and displays its name in My Computer. I am running a P4 2.8 dual proc so that might have something do with it. If you're system is older or perhaps you don't have DMA activated, it might take longer for the disk info to hit the processor. In other words, if you're machine is PII 450 with 256MB of 133 SDRAM, yeah, NERO is gonna run slow and the buffering is going to slow everything else down. With dual 2.8 GHz processor cores (the P4 HT), it ain't a problem. As for the "pokey" speeds for CD writing, I coped, using CDClone, an entire CD (Rush's "Power Windows" which I bought, egads, almost twenty years ago, but it was starting to show "eaten" away spots...so much for CDs lasting a century!), drive to drive (the Vaio came with a Pioneer 106D, which while on the slow side itself, I moved down to slot 2, replacing the ASUS CD-ROM drive the 'puter came with) is less than 4 minutes. I don't know why anyone would need to burn an entire CD in less than for minutes. Maybe there's somebody, but I can't see any real difference. Other than, the drive works great and I would reccommend it to anyone. I haven't had the chance to get any 8x DVD media. I'd already bought a large quantity of DVD+Rs 4X's and those have to be used before I buy the 8x discs. Besides, they are little pricey right now; too pricey just to be able to say, "Hey I backed up a whole movie in 7 minutes, cool, hunh?" Sure the new Sony I saw the shelves at Fry's will burn CDs at 40x speed. But in my book that ain't worth the extra hundred the Sony will cost you. Plus word of mouth on Sony optical drives--in my years in the industry--not very good and the reviews here on Amazon seem to indicate it hasn't got much better. But if you're looking for a solid drive, good burning software (that having been said, if you've already got a good burning package that you're comfortable with, I'd leave it alone; Nero includes a lot of stuff that, while not exactly 'bloatware' in the classic Micro$oftian sense, isn't really useful to the average consumer who wants to burn movies of the grandkids, make perfectly legal--see 321 decision by Judge Susan Illston--backup copies of DVDs you own; but if you are into authoring your own DVDs or Divx (Can TVs display MPEG-4 video straight from the video card?), then it's got everything you need; also, it's burning engine is excellent and is required if you want DVDShrink to burn the discs it transcodes for you) and don't need the fatest car on the block--so to speak--then this solid optical drive's features and price point make it a good choice. I deduct only one star for the inclusion of a stripped down version of Nero instead of the Ultra Package; or, failing that, an upgrade coupon for the "maxi-big" version, to quote Jar-Jar Binks. Odd that Ahead or Memorex would miss the "upsale" opportunity. In any event, A-.
Rating: 
Summary: Avoid this unit.
Review: I bought mine thinking "what a deal!" -- as usual, you get what you pay for. Mine installed flawlessly and looked sexy, but that is the only reason why I am giving it 1 star. I burned 8 "coasters" (both DVD-R and DVD+R) at various speeds (4x, 6x, 8x, 16x) but I was never able to record a single good disc. The bundled software (Nero) was either recording the discs without reporting problems (only to find out later that they had tons of errors on them), or it was simply stalling at some point, randomly (2%, 3%, 54%, 75%). I have a 5400rpm hard drive, 256Mb of RAM, and a 1Ghz processor. All my other applications were closed during the burning sessions. Excuse me, but that should be enough for a DVD burning process. If it's not, they haven't gotten it right yet... I took the drive back after 4 days of repeated, frustrating failures, and I spent the extra twenty bucks to get me a (roughly equivalent) Sony double-layer DVD burner, which apparently works a lot better (burned one DVD so far, tested it thoroughly afterwards -- no errors. Bravos Sony; Memorex please go back to the drawing board). Hope this helps.
Rating: 
Summary: Beware of rated burn speeds
Review: I bought the drive mainly because of the Nero software. Recently began using 8X DVD-R Memorex media but drive does not burn at 8X to DVD-R. Although box and booklet cover state it does, page seven in the instructions states only 4X on DVD-R media. It's very disingenuous of Memorex to call this drive a "True 8X."
Rating:
Summary: Don't buy this stuff
Review: I got this dvd burner manufactured by memorex about 3 months ago, I got it for 69.99 at tiger direct, but I never got it to work, it does not even read discs and no one can help me out nowhere... then went to www.memorex.com to get more information about some new firmware or software which could solve my problem and nothing! Now, I have this sony dvd burner, it works great and customer support is great
Rating:
Summary: Works for me
Review: I needed to replace the DVD+RW that came with my HP 793. I have DVD-RW on other computers, so I am happy with a DVD+/-RW. I needed to change a jumper, but the directions were clear and the replaced drive confirmed the instructions, so that was no problem. The unit slid into the slot, XP Home recognized it and I was able to back up the computer on 2 DVD+RWs using BackUpMyPC. So far I have not used any of the software that came with the drive. No problems so far.
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